“I’ll tell you,” he said, “about Lefty. He’s blew!”
That materially assisted the Big Shot’s recovery. Rage convulsed him.
“What d’you mean, blew?” he thundered. “You guys let him walk, did you?”
“He didn’t walk,” said Walsh. “He slid. He went out my winda into the alley.”
Coats struggled to his feet.
“Then he was tipped!” he accused. “Somebody told him he was in for the works.” His jaw dropped. “Say — that dame! Did she come up here with me and give me th’ double cross?”
“Nope. She went out.”
Walsh was at Lefty Byrne’s window, looking across the yards. He knew Dorcas O’Donnell’s window, for Lefty once had pointed it out to him. On that window his eyes were fixed. A clothes line leading from it to a pole in the center of the noisy court was strung with what struck him, after a moment, as a preposterous assortment of clothing.
His gaze widened as he stared, and suddenly he snorted.
“My Gawd!” he wheezed. “She’s went and pulled that gag with the wash again. An’ maybe she didn’t hand Byrne a lineful this time!”
Coats came up behind him.
“What th’ hell are you talkin’ about?” he snapped.
Walsh pointed at the clothes line.
“There! That’s where Lefty got his dope!”
The Big Shot looked hard at him.
“Somebody’s cuckoo.”
Walsh laughed wildly.
“Somebody’s slick,” he amended between gasps. “It’ll all come out in the wash, they say, and this is once when it did! Listen, Sam. I mind one time when Dorcas O’Donnell fell down on a date with Lefty Byrne. Usually she ducks the heavy wine parties, see? — but she’d got into one where she had to drink plenty. And d’yuh know the way she tipped off Lefty what was the matter with her? She hung out some sheets on her wash line, to signal him she was woozy. Three of ’em, get it? So much as to tell him she was ‘three sheets in th’ wind!’ Ho, ho!”
“What a dame!” commended Coats. He stared at the O’Donnell clothes line again. “But what’s that got to do with — now?”
“It’s the tip off,” said Walsh, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief. “Look at that line a’ hers, Sam. What do you see on it?”
“A lot a’ junk,” grunted Coats.
“Name some a’ the things, Sam.”
“You’re nuts. But... well, there’s one a’ them gadgets a broad wears inside her dress sometimes.”
Walsh nodded.
“Sure. That’s right. They call it a ‘slip.’ And what else do you see?”
Coats cursed him.
“Is this an eye test? But it’s a crazy wash at that, when you come to look it over. The upstairs part of a couple pyjama suits without no pants. An’ the half of a pair a’ socks without the soul mate.”
“Fine,” approved Walsh. “Two pyjama coats and a sock. Also, a white belt and an item a’ underclothes. And two sheets and a wash tie, and a lace collar. But you don’t start readin’ in the middle of a line, do you? Read this one from left to right, now!”
“I’ll call a doctor,” Coats offered. “Stop your laughin’. You’re drunk!”
“Who wouldn’t laugh?” clucked Walsh. “I’ll read it to you myself — left to right, the way the line faces Lefty’s winda here. No, I’ll do better. I’ll write it out for yuh.”
He scribbled rapidly on the back of an envelope and handed the envelope to Coats. Reading it, the Big Shot collapsed heavily on the edge of the bed.
“Yeah,” he murmured mournfully “I could sure a’ used that dame! She beats me. She played me right into it.”
Once more, gone speechless, he stared at Walsh’s transcription of the O’Donnell “wash.” It was there, an out-and-out wigwag as the quick-eyed Walsh had written and spaced it:
A sickly grin spread over the Big Shot’s face.
“Well, I dunno,” he said. “Maybe I’m lucky at that. Cop a dame that works as fast as that, an’ she owns you. Me, I’ll pick ’em dumb an’ be general!”
Exploits of the Wolf
by Alan Hynd
Linky Mitchell was the terror of the underworld until a little man with a keen eye threw a hat in his face...
I
“The Wolf is dead!”
A few weeks ago, when those words slipped from twisted mouths with lightning-like rapidity in certain quarters of that weird labyrinth known as New York’s underworld, there was great rejoicing.
“He’s dead, huh? Well, that’s a relief!”
But Federal officials, from the President down, knew that with the passing of the Wolf — otherwise known as James R. Kerrigan — the Government of the United States had suffered an irreparable loss. For Kerrigan was the ace of Uncle Sam’s narcotic agents. A man of unadulterated courage and stamina, despite the fact that the scales said only one hundred and twenty pounds, and the possessor of a brain that was sharper than that of the sharpest criminal, Kerrigan thrust terror into the hearts of narcotic law violators, big and small, in this country and in Europe, for more than a decade. Hence his sobriquet.
This month he would be in San Francisco’s dimly lit Chinatown, battering down the doors of an “importing and exporting house,” and seizing a few hundred thousand dollars’ worth of dope, single-handed. Next month he would be aboard a transatlantic liner, peering through the keyhole of a stateroom in the dead of the night, unearthing a gigantic smuggling plot. On another occasion he might be found sitting in a joint deep in the notorious halfway world of Amsterdam, his keen ears tuned in on conversations not intended for him.
Born in New York’s famous East Side, the Wolf grew up with many of those individuals who were later to carve niches for themselves in the realm of dishonest enterprise. Accordingly, when the Wolf passed on he took to his grave with him inside information about criminals which will never be retrieved. Literally, he was a walking encyclopedia of information on the underworld and its habitués. He hadn’t the time to impart all he knew. He revealed a good deal to his fellow agents, understand, but not half enough.
Often times he would be walking along murky streets with his two side-kicks — Agents Ray Connolley and Louis Kelley — when some one whom he knew would slink by.
“See that guy?” the Wolf would say. “Well, listen; take a good look at him and I’ll slip you the low-down on him in case I get bumped off.” And thereupon the Wolf would narrate the history of the individual in question, giving, among other things, his racket, his various hangouts, his real name and his aliases, the date of his birth, the names and addresses of those with whom he contacted, and so on ad infinitum.
The police, when they were at sea regarding the whereabouts of a certain person they wanted, usually called on the Wolf. They figured that he would have, in the back of his unusual and retentive brain, the information they desired. And they were rarely disappointed.
A few years ago, when the river pirates in and around Gotham were extremely active, the authorities decided to call a halt to their nefarious practices. Things had gone a trifle beyond the pale of tolerance. In fact, it got so that a self-respecting boat was afraid to go out at night. If it did, it was looted.
Whereupon some one suggested:
“Maybe the Wolf can help us out.”
So the Wolf was asked what he knew about the activities of the river pirates.
“Well,” he answered, “that’s a little out of my line. Dope, you know, is my meat. But I think I can help you boys.”